Poor Max. You’ve given yourself a challenge after making the decision to wish your brother Felix away. It’s a challenge that is now up to you, the player, to overcome, if you can. There’s a fine line between fun and frustrating; welcome to that crossroad in Curse of the Brotherhood.

From the trailer you might have picked up a fun action adventure, but it’s quite the opposite. It’s an extremely challenge puzzle based game that will definitely stretch your brain and have the protagonist dying again and again. And again!

After falling into the outer realm where Felix is being held captured, max goes through a few simplistic obstacles on pursuit for his brother. From then on the experience never slows down. Shortly after, you run into an older woman who channels her soul into your marker, allowing you to maneuver your way through the game creating and destroying different types of elements that unlock through each chapter.

I found myself dying plenty of time to where I had to stop for a moment and strategize. Either that or perfect my timing. If you enjoy puzzles this game is right up your alley. So many games come to mind as it’s a platforming adventure, though nothing like Mario. The closest title to resemble the experience to is RedLynx’s Trial “Evolution.” Getting from start to end is just part of the challenge. How to make it in one piece is the true test.

There are also different monsters in the game that demands to determine methods to skillfully get around them. The only true monster-ish create that can be attacked is the eyeballs. The game briefly mentions them as Mustachios way of viewing the realm as though they were cameras. Finding them does unlock a few achievements. But no other significance was figured out.

Max: Curse of the Brotherhood looks great; Astonishing in fact! My one downside with the game was how the focus on Felix at times was out of the picture for way too long. Though Max randomly made remarks like “Felix I’m coming,” it wasn’t frequent enough to tie in to the story.

The overall experience was exceptionally well designed for puzzle fans. Expect to fall, sink and much more to your death. But most importantly expect a lot of fun. Max: Curse of the Brotherhood is easily one of the better choices right now in the Xbox One store (In perspective to arcade releases)!